trolleys, piled high with crates and maintenance equipment, trundled down obediently out of the rear of the van.
One of the men walked over to the elevator and pulled a processor block out of his pocket. He typed something on the block’s surface, paused, then typed again, casting a nervous glance at his impassive workmates as they watched him.
The building management processor array accepted the coded instruction which the block had datavised, and the elevator doors hissed open.
Emmet Mordden couldn’t help the way his shoulders sagged in sheer relief as soon as the doors started to move. In his past life he’d suffered from a weak bladder, and it seemed as though he’d brought the condition with him to the body he now possessed. Certainly his guts were dangerously wobbly. Being in on the hard edge of operations always did that to him. He was strictly a background tech; until, of course, the day in 2535 when his syndicate boss got greedy, and sloppy with it. The police claimed afterwards that they’d given the gang an opportunity to surrender, but by then Emmet Mordden was past caring.
He shoved the processor block back into his overalls pocket while he brought out his palm-sized tool-kit. Interesting to see how technology had advanced in the intervening seventy-five years; the principles were the same, but circuitry and programs were considerably more sophisticated.
A key from the tool-kit opened the cover over the elevator’s small emergency manual control panel. He plugged an optical cable into the interface socket, and the processor block lit up with a simple display. The unit took eight seconds to decode the elevator monitor program commands and disable the alarm.
“We’re in,” he told the others, and unplugged the optical cable. The more basic the electronic equipment, the more chance it had of operating in proximity to possessed bodies. By reducing the processor block functions to an absolute minimum he’d found he could make it work, although he still fretted about the efficiency.
Al Capone slapped him on the shoulder as the rest of the work crew and the flatbeds squeezed into the elevator. “Good work there, Emmet. I’m proud of you, boy.”
Emmet gave a fragile grin of gratitude, and pressed the DOOR CLOSE button. He respected the resolve which Al had bestowed on the group of possessed. There had been so much bickering before about how to go about turning more bodies over for possession. It was as though they’d spent ninety per cent of their time arguing among themselves and jockeying for position. The only agreements they ever came to were grudgingly achieved.
Then Al had come along and explained as coolly as you like that he was taking charge now thank you very much. Somehow it didn’t surprise Emmet that a man who displayed such clarity of purpose and thought would have the greatest energistic strength. Two people had objected. And the little stick held so nonchalantly in Al Capone’s hand had grown to a full-sized baseball bat.
Nobody else had voiced any dissension after that. And the beauty of it was, the dissenters could hardly go running to the cops.
Emmet wasn’t sure which he feared the most, Al’s strength or his temper. But he was just a soldier who obeyed orders, and happy with it. If only Al hadn’t insisted he come with them this morning.
“Top floor,” Al said.
Emmet pressed the appropriate button. The elevator rose smoothly.
“Okay, guys, now remember with our strength we can always blast our way out if anything goes wrong,” Al said. “But this is our big chance to consolidate our hold over this town in one easy move. If we get rumbled, it’s gonna be tough from here on. So let’s try and stick to what we planned, right?”
“Absolutely, Al,” Bernhard Allsop said eagerly. “I’m with you all the way.”
Several of the others gave him barely disguised glances of contempt.
Al ignored them all, and smiled heartily. Je-zus, but this felt good; starting out with nothing again apart from his ambition. But this time he knew the moves to make in advance. The others in the group had filled him in on chunks of history from the last few centuries. The New California administration was a direct descendant of the old U.S. of A government. The feds. And Al had one or two old scores to settle with those bastards.
The elevator doors chimed gently as they opened on the one hundred and fiftieth floor. Dwight Salerno and Patricia Mangano were out first. They smiled at the three staff members who were in the corridor and killed them with a single coordinated blast of white fire. Smoking bodies hit the floor.
“We’re okay, they didn’t get out an alarm,” Emmet said, consulting his processor block.
“Get to it, people,” Al told his team proudly. This wasn’t the same as the times with his soldiers like Anselmi and Scalise back on Cicero’s streets. But these new guys had balls, and a cause. And it felt righteous to be a mover again.
The possessed spread out through the top floor. Tarosa Metamech uniforms gave way to clothes of their own periods. A startlingly unpleasant variety of weapons appeared in their hands. Doors were forced open with precisely applied bolts of white fire, rooms searched according to the list. Everyone following their assignment to the letter. Capone’s letter.
It was six o’clock in the morning in San Angeles, and few of the mayor’s staff were at work. Those that had turned up early found Retros bursting into their offices and hauling them out at gunpoint. Their neural nanonics failed, desktop blocks crashed, net processors wouldn’t respond. There was no way to get a warning out, no way to cry for help. They found themselves corralled in the deputy health director’s office, seventeen of them, clinging together in panic and mutual misery.
They thought that would surely be the worst of it, crammed into the one room for hours or maybe a couple of days while negotiations for their release were conducted with the terrorists. But then the Retros started taking them out one at a time, summoning the toughest first. The sound of screams cut back clean through the thick door.
Al Capone stood by the long window wall of the mayor’s office, and looked out at the city. It was a magnificent view. He couldn’t remember being so high off the ground in his life before. This skyscraper made the Empire State Building look puny for God’s sake. And it wasn’t even the tallest in the city.
The skyscrapers only occupied the central portion of San Angeles, fifty or sixty of them bunched together to form the business, finance, and administration district. Beyond that the vast urban sprawl clung to the shallow folds of the land, long grey lines of buildings and autoways, interspaced with the equally regular squares of green parks. And to the east was the brilliant glimmer of the ocean.
Al, who had always enjoyed Lake Michigan in the summer, was fascinated by the glistening turquoise expanse as it reflected the first light of a new day. And the city was so clean, vibrant. So different from Chicago. This was an empire which Stalin and Genghis Khan would both envy.
Emmet knocked on the door, and popped his head around when he didn’t receive an answer. “Sorry to bother you, Al,” he ventured cautiously.
“That’s okay, boy,” Al said. “What’ve you got for me?”
“We’ve rounded up everyone on this floor. The electronics are all fucked, so they can’t get word out. Bernhard and Luigi have started to bring them to possession.”
“Great, you’ve all done pretty goddamn good.”
“Thanks, Al.”
“What about the rest of the electrics, the telephones and math-machine things?”
“I’m getting my systems plugged into the building network now, Al. Give me half an hour and I should have it locked down safe.”
“Good. Can we go to stage two?”
“Sure, Al.”
“Okay, boy, you get back to your wiring.”
Emmet backed out of the office. Al wished he knew more about electrics himself. This future world depended so much on their clever mini-machines. That had to be a flaw. And Al Capone knew all about exploiting such weaknesses.
He let his mind slip into that peculiar state of otherness, and felt around for the rest of the possessed under his command. They were positioned all around the base of City Hall, strolling casually down the sidewalk, in cars parked nearby, eating breakfast in arcade diners.
Come, he commanded.
And the big ground floor doors of City Hall opened wide.
